Four Things and a Lizard
by KifKathleen
Summary: What are the four things and a lizard that the Doctor is dealing with when he meets Sally Sparrow at the end of "Blink"? Why is he carrying a bow and arrows? And what does all of this have to do with Charlemagne and an insane computer?
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:** Like most Whovians, I really wanted to know what four things and a lizard the Doctor is dealing with at the end of "Blink". Equally, I was wondering why in the world our favorite time travelers are carrying a bow and arrows. Then while watching "The Unicorn and the Wasp", I noticed that in the Doctor's flashback about visiting the Ardennes ("I was searching for Charlemagne. He had been kidnapped by an insane computer"), he has...that's right...a bow and arrows. Since the Doctor is not known for carrying weaponry, I figured the two incidents had to be related, and this story is my attempt to stitch them together.

**Disclaimer:** Sadly, I don't own Doctor Who and make no profit from it.

* * *

Martha's eyes flicked between the razor-sharp arrow pointed at her throat and the hostile face of the soldier aiming it. "You know, Doctor, when you said we were going to a coronation, I was picturing something a little more posh and a little less I'm-going-to-die."

The warm early-morning drizzle had turned the Doctor's normal gravity-defying hairstyle into a limp damp curtain that threatened to obscure his vision. With his hands currently occupied by being raised in surrender, he had to clear his eyes with a toss of his head that sent drops spraying over his companion. "Yes, well, I may have been just a shade off on the time. And the location."

"A shade off? We're in the middle of a forest. And a few hundred years early, by the look of it."

"A few hun–? Whose coronation did you think we were going to?"

"I don't know. Queen Victoria's?"

"Queen Vic–?" His voice hit a new octave. "Why would I take you to see Queen Victoria? She _hates_ me. Banished me for life, she did. Definitely wasn't amused. Of course, that was much later on; I suppose her coronation would be safe enough. Whoever said you don't get a second chance to make a first impression never met a time traveller, and–"

"Silence!" said one of the soldiers; his metal helmet, in contrast to the thick leather caps of the rest of the band, marked him as the leader.

The Doctor turned towards him, not looking the least bit cowed, although Martha noted that he was careful not to make any sudden moves. "Listen, you. I've got a half-dozen lethal weapons aimed at various vital organs. I'd think that the least you could do would be to allow me a bit of nervous wittering. And what exactly is your problem with us, anyway?"

"Well, she's a Moor." The soldier's tone made clear that this should be answer enough.

The Doctor looked at Martha as if seeing her for the first time. "Why, so she is."

"And you're consorting with Moors."

"Why, so I am." He raised his brows, shrugged his shoulders in universal body language that needed no TARDIS translation: _So what?_

"I am not a M–" Martha said, but the Doctor cut her off.

"You are to them. It's the only frame of reference they have," he said to her in an undertone. Then aloud to their captors: "What she means is that she has left her people behind to join herself to you."

"She can't be trusted. Moors are treacherous. Can't believe a word out of their mouths."

"Humans! You're such a parochial lot. It's a wonder you ever got out of the Dark Ages. Well, I suppose you haven't yet, have you?" The Doctor sounded properly exasperated now. Martha smiled in anticipation. An exasperated Doctor was usually a clever Doctor. "Listen, you lot, you're Franks, right? You've got loads of Moors living in peace among you. Well, more or less in peace – most of them were converted at swordpoint – but still… So why are you so suspicious of us?"

"We're suspicious of everyone since our lord went missing."

"And who is your lord?"

"Charles the Great, King of Francia."

The Doctor grinned and bounced on his toes. "Charlemagne? Brilliant! That's who we've been looking for. But missing, eh? That's not so good. We'll see what we can do about that."

As he started to reach into his jacket, Martha leaned in to mutter, "Doctor, if you're going for the screwdriver, please don't do anything that'll get us burned as witches."

"Please. I have done this a time or two, you know." His hand emerged with the psychic paper. "You can read, can't you?" he said to the leader of the troop.

The man's hesitation revealed the real answer, but he said loudly, "Of course!"

"Well, then, you will find that this decree charges me to track and recover his missing majesty Charles the Great, by the authority of his son Pepin, king of Italy. My companion and I, as well as His Majesty King Pepin, would appreciate your full cooperation and respect." He waved the paper under the soldier's nose.

"Pepin? King of Italy? Pepin isn't king of anything."

"He isn't? I'm a bit early again, I guess," he said, in a voice that Martha had to strain to hear. More loudly, he continued, "Well, it seems the news hasn't reached you yet." He returned the psychic paper to his pocket and then pulled it back out with a flourish. "Here I have another royal decree, this one signed by none other than His Majesty King Charlemagne, appointing his son Pepin as king of Italy. All very hush-hush, didn't even want his own men knowing about it till the deal was done."

The soldier wiped his nose on a sleeve, spat, looked doubtful. But not many men could hold out against the Doctor's air of unshakable self-assurance. He signaled his men, and the bows were loosened. Both time travellers breathed a bit easier. "How did Pepin even know of this matter, let alone dispatch you from Italy so fast? The king has only been missing for a day."

When the Doctor hesitated, Martha jumped in. "He had a premonition several days ago. A vision in the night. So he summoned us."

"We have been searching since yesterday, but we have found no sign of him. You really think you can do better?"

"Me? Of course. Tracker extraordinaire, I am. I can track a falcon on a cloudy day; I can find Charlemagne."

"Doctor," Martha whispered, "That's not you, that's Prince Humperdinck from _The Princess Bride_."

"Is it?" He ruffled his hair. "Thought it sounded familiar. Well, so maybe tracking a falcon is a bit of a stretch, but I can definitely track a king." He squinted at the greenery around him. "So let's start with: Where exactly are we?"

The leader frowned at him. "You are a great tracker, and you don't know where you are?"

"Eh, look who knows so much about tracking! I don't have to know where I am to know where the king has been, do I?"

"This glen is known as Fairies' Grove."

"Okay, I was hoping for a little more big-picture than that. Where is Fairies' Grove?"

"Oh, come now! Surely you know the region you are in?"

"We've been keeping our heads to the ground, watching for clues. Haven't seen the forest for the trees."

The soldier threw his hands in the air. "Fine. You're in the Ardennes."

"The Ardennes? Ooh, the Ardennes! That rings a bell. Why does that ring a bell? Wait, what year is this?" The Doctor noticed Martha's eye roll, and said under his breath, "I already admitted my timing was a shade off, all right?"

"Are you an imbecile?" asked the leader.

"So I've been told. What year is it?"

"778."

"So, Ardennes, 778, Charlemagne in possible danger…What is so familiar about all this?" The Doctor paced back and forth, rubbing the back of his neck, muttering to himself. The troop watched him with a mixture of awe and wariness. Martha tried to look as if she knew exactly what was going through his head, figuring that was the best way to prevent the reappearance of the weapons. Finally, the Doctor spun to face her, jabbing a finger up in the air. "I've got it! The Song of Roland!"

The leader stiffened. "How do you know my name?"

The Doctor turned, his face softened. "Roland? You are Roland? Oh. I'm sorry. I truly am so sorry."

"Sorry? For what?" Roland's hand went to the hilt of his sword.

The Doctor blinked, caught himself. "What? Nothing. Don't mind me. I talk constantly. Hardly ever means anything."

"It's true," Martha said, "He does. And it doesn't."

"Right, so we'll start in the last place where you saw Charlemagne."

* * *

Martha stood in the middle of Charlemagne's campaign tent, watching the Doctor bound around, sniffing and tasting various objects. He had insisted to their escort that the trackers needed absolute privacy to begin their search, so Martha was at last free to ask, "So what was that all about – Song of Roland, 'I'm so sorry'?"

"The Song of Roland is an early French epic poem about a battle between the Franks and the Moors. Mostly over-embellished propagandistic poppycock, of course, but it does have some grains of truth. One of which is that the hero of the song, our good friend Roland, dies in the battle."

"So we're here to save him?"

The Doctor licked a wooden bowl and set it down with a grimace before looking at her. "Don't be daft. What good would that do? We save him, it just means he lives to kill someone else. It never ends with you lot."

"Don't say my lot. You don't see me with a weapon, do you?"

"Anyway, for our purposes, the salient point is that one verse relates a nightmare Charlemagne had about being attacked by a leopard from the Ardennes."

"And you think that's what really happened here?"

"What, do I think a leopard kidnapped Charlemagne? Of course not. Over-embellished poppycock, remember? The song has grains of truth, not whole boulders of it. Besides, leopards don't smell like this."

"Like what?"

"You can't smell that? That mix of chubernium and ionic energy? How bland your world must seem."

"Hold on, chu-what?"

"Chubernium. Commonly used in your higher-end hologram generators. And the ionic energy means it must be very high-end indeed."

Martha was trying hard to keep up. "Okay, a hologram in the middle of a medieval forest sounds like a sure sign of aliens. So you're thinking that Princess Leia kidnapped Charlemagne?"

The Doctor squinted at her. "Sorry, who?"

"Princess Leia? Star Wars? The beginning of the movie, she appears in a hol– Never mind, stupid joke."

"I don't know what you're on about, but you're right that there is likely an alien involved in his disappearance. You want to blend in on a primitive planet where you don't look like the natives, you're going to need either a shimmer or else a decent hologram generator."

"So we find the hologram, we find Charlemagne. You can follow the scent, yeah?"

He looked mildly offended. "Martha, I'm not a bloodhound."

"But you just said–" She sighed. "All right, so what's the plan?"

The Doctor dropped into a fencing stance, waving the screwdriver at her like a sword. "Simple enough. We use the screwdriver to scan for alien tech." He straightened up, his eyes clouded with a wistful, far-off look that Martha had secretly dubbed "The Rose". But mercifully, he didn't bring up the missing companion; instead, he gave himself a shake and forced a grin. "Right, then, allons-y!"

He dashed out of the tent and nearly ran headlong into Roland. "Sorry, Roland, can't chat, we're on the trail, gotta run."

Roland didn't move, just stared down at the blinking screwdriver. "What is that thing?"

"This? It's, um, it's the latest scientific advancement by scholars in Florence. Very complicated. No time to explain it."

"It looks like a tool of the Devil."

"No, trust me, the Devil doesn't have one of these."

"But that light, the flashing…it's ungodly."

"It's fireflies," the Doctor said straight-faced, while Martha fell into a coughing fit behind him. "Bunch of little fireflies under blue stained glass. Quite popular with the Italian nobility this year."

Roland, still looking befuddled, at last stepped aside, and the Doctor and Martha took off at top speed before he could think to question them further.


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer:** Sadly, I don't own Doctor Who and make no profit from it.

* * *

"We're close now." The Doctor lay on his belly in a stand of ferns, peering over the crest of a hill into the hollow below.

"Look, there." Martha pointed to the east side of the little valley. The Doctor pulled a pair of opera glasses from his voluminous coat pockets and studied the scene; after repeated elbowing from Martha, he finally passed them over to her.

A man stood pressed up against an oak tree, sweating in the glare of the August sun high overhead, an unnatural blue light surrounding him. His eyes were closed, his beard quivered as his lips formed soundless words. And in front of him paced a leopard that was not a leopard at all; its mouth too was moving in speech whose sound vaguely filtered up to the observers, although they couldn't quite make out the words.

"Charlemagne's not trying to escape," Martha said.

"That blue glow – he's bound with tachyon restraints."

"It looks like he's talking. What's he doing?"

"He's from a superstitious, primitive culture; he's pinned in place by an invisible force; and his jailer is a talking animal. What do you think he's doing?" The Doctor rose to a crouch and helped Martha up; they stealthily worked their way down the hillside.

The leopard's voice grew clearer as they approached, a measured monotone, not harsh, but relentless. "Where is the Brood? I must protect the children. Tell me where they are."

The Doctor's eyes got wider as he got closer. A few yards away, he could restrain himself no longer. "Ooh, look at you, you beauty!" The creature whirled to face him; Charlemagne's eyes flew open. "That is just a gorgeous hologram. I mean it, truly. Absolutely top-notch." The Doctor walked a circle around the leopard, studying, admiring.

"Identify yourself."

"Me? I'm the Doctor. This is Martha Jones. Say hello, Martha." His companion managed a tight smile and a wave. "Now you identify yourself."

"I am the Broodkeeper. It is my duty to care for the Brood. Do you have information on its location?"

The Doctor's face softened. "No, I'm sorry. I don't."

"Then you are irrelevant." The leopard resumed its pacing.

"Pretty sure that bloke doesn't know anything either," the Doctor said.

"Readings indicate that he is the highest authority in the area. He is the most likely source of reliable information."

"Doctor," Martha whispered, "That voice – doesn't it sound a little…Daleky?"

"Not Dalek, no. But mechanical, yes. Let's see just what we are dealing with." A buzz of the screwdriver, and the leopard was gone, replaced by a dark-grey robot, brushed metal gleaming in the sun, a round body propelled along on six spidery legs, two bulbous eyepieces protruding from the top. Charlemagne sucked in a sharp breath and crossed himself, his lips moving faster than ever.

The robot turned once more in the Doctor's direction, eyes glowing with a bright green light. "Interference will not be tolerated."

The Doctor tackled Martha to the ground as a laser fried the air just above their heads and cut a young poplar behind them in half. "I'm not interfering, I'm helping! Tell me where you are from, tell me what happened to the Brood, and I can help you get them back."

Another blast forced him to keep his head down. "When the safety of the Brood is compromised, my directive is to seek strategic information from the highest authority. All others are irrelevant. Distraction from the task cannot be permitted."

"But who gave you this directive? Where does your Brood originate from?"

The Broodkeeper was once more ignoring the Doctor, firing questions and orders instead at Charlemagne. The Doctor started to rise, but as the green laser sights swung in his direction, he wisely elected to drop back to the ground and begin crawling away. Martha was only too happy to follow.

* * *

In the safety of the TARDIS, however, Martha was having second thoughts. "I can't believe we just left him there with that thing!" She paced back and forth in the workshop, while the Doctor peered through an illuminated loupe attached to his glasses, fiddling with some bit of circuitry.

"Hand me the electron difractor. No, not that, that's the electrostatic modulator. The blue one. No, the other blue one. That's it. Eh, don't worry, he'll be fine. He's Charles the Great!"

"But we ran away. We never run away. We stay and we set things right and we save people. Or you do, at least."

He looked over the top of his spectacles. "You do too, Martha. You always have. Don't sell yourself short. Anyway, we didn't run away; we made a tactical retreat to regroup. Would you rather we had stayed and gotten ourselves fried to a crisp by the Broodkeeper? Fat lot of good we would have done Charlemagne then."

"So what is this Broodkeeper thing anyway?"

The Doctor leaned over the circuitry again, working as he talked. "Humans, like most of the higher species in the universe, carry your young inside you till they are viable. Has its inconveniences, but at least you're mobile throughout the process. But there are still plenty of species out there that reproduce by laying eggs or something similar. So what do you do if you are an intelligent, technologically advanced race, and you don't want to spend weeks or months sitting in one spot incubating your children?"

Martha thought for a moment. "You build a babysitter?"

"_Molto bene_. A droid that can both care for the babies and protect them if necessary."

"But this one seems to have lost its charges."

"Yes. And it appears that its programming is not well-equipped to handle such a situation, which has caused it to, well…"

"Go insane?"

"I suppose you could put it like that."

"Any idea what happened?" Martha asked.

"None. I don't even know where they are from, let alone where they ended up. But I'm hoping the Broodkeeper can tell me that."

"Doctor, do you not remember the part where it tried to kill us the last time you asked it those questions?"

The Doctor grinned, whipped off his glasses with one hand, waved the circuitboard aloft with a pair of forceps in the other hand. "Ah, but that's where this comes in. I spotted a universal port just above the droid's right front leg. This chip will give me a back door into his neural network, allow me to override his programming. All I have to do is plug it in."

"Uh-huh. And how do you plan to get close enough to do that?"

The Doctor froze, stared up at the ceiling, looking oddly crestfallen. "That is…That is actually an excellent question."

"Well, do we really even need that chip anyway? You've got a billion different settings on the screwdriver. You must have one for robot-blasting – I don't know, one that will short out the electrical system or something."

His brows knit together into one forbidding line. "No, Martha."

"What, don't look at me like that. I'm not suggesting murder. It's just a machine, and it's dangerous."

The Doctor stabbed the air with his fingers as he enumerated his points. "Firstly, it's not his fault; he's only following his programming. Two, he hasn't actually hurt anyone. And C, we need him, both to find the missing Brood and to care for them when we do. We can't just shoot him. We have to…Oh!" His face lit up, and he grabbed her hands and swung her in a circle, his joy so contagious that she laughed in delight without even knowing why. "Martha Jones, you are absolutely brilliant, you know that? You are quite right – we have to shoot him."

"Beg your pardon?"

"Come along, we've got to find Roland. I'm going to need some supplies."

* * *

Roland planted his palms on the table, leaned across it towards the Doctor, his face red, a vein bulging in his temple. "I _said_ I'm coming with you."

The Doctor mirrored his stance, less apoplectic but no less stubborn. "And I said no, you're not."

Martha sighed. They had been bickering like this for at least five minutes. "Roland–"

He rounded on her. "Why are you even here? This is no job for a woman."

Martha expected the Doctor to jump in and defend her, but there was silence, and when she looked over, he was staring at her, arms folded. _So I have to defend myself? _ It was a daunting prospect, facing down a hardened warrior with contempt for both her race and her gender written across his face. But the Doctor seemed to be waiting for her to speak, and she didn't want to disappoint him. Still, how to justify her presence? The Doctor was the hero; she was just the tag-along, the sidekick, the poor substitute for the companion he really wanted. She remembered her words to him just a short time ago: _We save people. Or you do, at least._ But then she remembered his reply – _You do too, Martha. You always have – _and suddenly, under the weight of his gaze, she realized what he had been trying to tell her.

She stood up straighter and drew a deep breath. _Can't let some medieval chauvinist with bad breath and an inflated ego intimidate me. Even if he does have arms like tree trunks. _"Listen, you." She jabbed her finger against Roland's chest. "I'm sure you are just great at killing people. But what's called for here is saving someone, and that's what _we_ do. The Doctor has been saving lives since before you were born. And as for me – well, very first time I met him, I saved him from a bloodsucker and a herd of rhinos."

"Judoon," the Doctor corrected, but Martha was on a roll.

"A herd of rhinos," she repeated firmly. "And since then, I've saved people from Carrionites and Daleks and some bloke who thought he had found the secret to eternal youth. But you know what? I was saving lives before I met the Doctor, too. That was my job. And you might not think it's women's work, but I was good at it. I am good at it. We are good at it. So how about we don't tell you how to fight a battle, and you don't tell us how to rescue Charlemagne, deal?" The Doctor was beaming at her, and that gave her the courage to stand tall under Roland's withering glare.

"This impudence is–"

"–Is entirely warranted," the Doctor said. "If you don't want to abide by our terms, you are free to find Charlemagne on your own. We'll leave you to it."

"You'll leave when I say you can leave. I have ways of compelling you to obey. I can use them."

Martha's blood ran cold at the dangerous tone in Roland's voice, but the Doctor seemed unperturbed. "Well, yes, you _can_, of course you can, although I don't know how much good we'd be as trackers if you did. But the point is, why would you? We're willing to help, we're offering to help; we only ask that you let us do it our way. And that means alone."

Roland stared and measured for a long time, then said, "You have until sundown tomorrow. After that, you will follow my command."

The Doctor grinned. "Brilliant. Now, we're going to need a bow–"

"Two bows," Martha said, not sure what she would do with it but feeling it was important to assert herself as an equal partner.

"Right, two bows. And some arrows. Oh, and some extra string."


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer:** Sadly, I don't own Doctor Who and make no profit from it.

* * *

The time travellers headed back to the glen where they had last seen captor and captive. As the undergrowth grew thicker, blackberry bushes and hazels crowding their path, the Doctor pulled something from beneath his coat and began swinging at the brush. "Wait, is that a machete?" Martha asked.

"No-no-no, wrong time and place for a machete. On the other hand, it is something of a medieval Germanic cousin, so go ahead, call it a machete if you'd like."

"Where did you get it?"

"Found it in Charlemagne's tent."

"You nicked a machete from Charlemagne?"

"Well, it's not like he's using it at the moment. I'll give it back once we find him. Assuming I remember." He threw her a grin and a wink.

She smiled back. "Well, someone is in a good mood."

"Why wouldn't I be, Martha? What an adventure! Here we are, roaming the Ardennes, searching for a missing king and an insane computer. We're going to free Charlemagne and fix the Broodkeeper and rescue the lost Brood. And we get to do it with a machete _and _a bow and arrows. How brilliant is that?" The Doctor was practically skipping, and his smile could not possibly grow any broader. He so often carried the weight of worlds on his shoulders; it did Martha's heart good to see his childish exuberance.

But his high spirits faded abruptly when they arrived at their destination to find it empty. "Are you sure this is the right spot?" Martha asked.

"Yes, of course I'm sure." He studied the screwdriver, flipped some settings, smacked the tool against his palm, shook it, glared at it. "It's not working."

"What do you mean? It led us to the Broodkeeper just fine a couple of hours ago. Just…" She pantomimed a scan around the glen with an imaginary screwdriver.

"It was picking up the emissions from the hologram generator. But then I turned off the hologram, remember? And apparently the Broodkeeper didn't turn it back on. So…no trail to follow." He wandered around the clearing, kicking at tufts of grass.

"Fine, so we do this the old-fashioned way, Mister Tracker." She squatted down in front of the oak where Charlemagne had been bound, studied the ground, rose to a half-crouch and began moving away.

"What are you doing?"

She looked up to see his incredulous stare. "What? I was a Girl Guide."

"Oh yes? Learned a lot of tracking in the middle of London, your unit did?"

"How hard can it be to follow? Not many animals in these parts leave perfectly round prints like this. Anyway, have you got a better idea?"

He didn't. And so he joined her, bent low over the trail, following the prints through ground still damp from the early morning's rain. Where the terrain was drier or rocky, they sometimes lost the track and were forced to search in ever-widening circles until they could pick it up again. And as the light slanted lower through the trees, they knew that their time was running short. So it was a relief when, just before the sun could slip behind a ridge, they heard a pair of voices, one familiarly mechanical.

The Doctor put a finger to his lips, slipped an arrow from his quiver, pulled off the arrowhead, took the circuitboard and a length of string from his pocket, and bound the chip to the shaft. Then they crept forward until they had a clear view of their quarry.

Robot and king were stopped on the muddy bank of a stream, their backs to the trackers. The Broodkeeper had sunk nearly to the tops of its legs in mire; spastic jerks marked its futile attempts to extricate itself. The mud covering Charlemagne's back and his legs up to the knees indicated that he had narrowly escaped the same fate. But now he was standing behind the creature, hands on hips, mocking its cries for help, out of reach of the swiveling eyepieces desperately firing laser beams at random.

"So now the tables have turned."

"Help me! Free me! I must find the children."

"You expect me to show mercy? May your children rot in the mire with you."

"Quicksand?" Martha murmured.

The Doctor turned away from the others and pitched his voice low so as not to carry. "Yep. Can happen anywhere the ground gets saturated enough. We have to act fast. If he sinks much further, the universal port will go under, and then my whole bow-and-arrow scheme is out the window. And I really, really want to use this bow and arrow. Hey, did I ever tell you I was once in an archery contest with Robin Hood?"

"Doctor–"

"Nice enough fellow. Most of the legends are exaggerated, of course, as legends usually are–"

"Doctor–"

"–But one thing they got right is that he certainly knew his way around a bow. Taught me how to– Wait, I don't hear Charlemagne anymore."

"Nope."

"He's looking at us, isn't he?"

"Yep."

The Doctor spun around and grinned. "Charlemagne! You're looking much better than the last time we saw you."

"I remember you," the king said. "Who are you? And what are you doing here?"

"I'm the Doctor, this is Martha. And we're here to rescue you."

Charlemagne drew himself up tall, folding his arms across his chest and staring down his prominent nose at the interlopers. "As you see, I have no need of rescue."

"Fine, then we're here to rescue him." He nodded to the floundering robot.

"That abomination? Why would you want to save that monstrosity, that–"

"Eh, I'm sure he's not so bad once you get to know him. He's having an off day, is all."

"I forbid it."

The Doctor groaned in frustration. "Honestly, between you and Roland, this is getting tiresome. Listen, Your Majesty, I am not one of your subjects, so…" He shook the arrow at him. "So don't try to order me around."

"Are you threatening me with a headless arrow?" the king scoffed.

"This?" The Doctor looked down at the object, seeming slightly surprised to see it in his hands. "Not at all. I'm threatening you with this." He reached into his jacket and came out with the screwdriver. "Back off, or I'll unleash the diabolical fireflies of doom on you!"

Charlemagne took a look at the flashing blue light, and glowered but took a step back. The Doctor returned the screwdriver to his pocket, unslung the bow from his shoulder, and nocked the arrow onto it. "Right, glad that's settled. Now let's see what we can do here." He began a cautious circle around to the Broodkeeper's front. "All right, now, I'm here to help, so stop struggling and stop wittering and above all, stop shooting!"

But his directions fell on deaf metal ears. The Broodkeeper continued jerking, driving itself ever deeper into the quicksand, its cries echoing around the clearing, interspersed with the crackle of laser beams. But at least its aim was well above the Doctor's head, to the Time Lord's relief.

"Doctor, I think maybe it's trying to shoot down a tree branch, you know, for leverage or something," Martha said.

"Well, I wish it would stop!"

The wisdom of those words was borne out when a large aspen branch crashed to the ground, narrowly missing crushing the Broodkeeper. The sudden stillness that followed was broken by the Doctor's chuff of frustration. He slacked the bow and pulled out his glasses to study the fallen limb. It lay snug against the robot's side, a leafy profusion of twigs splaying out in front of him and obscuring the Doctor's target. "Now see what you've done. I can't even see your port now, let alone hit it."

The Broodkeeper seemed to rise a little taller on mud-encased legs at this, laser eyes swivelling to fix on the Doctor. "Unauthorized access to the neural network is prohibited. Threats must be eliminated."

The Doctor skipped out of the way just ahead of the laser blast, and returned to the safe zone behind the creature. "Well, that could have gone better."

"Now what?" Martha asked.

"First things first, I've got to get that branch out of the way. Hard to tell where the quicksand starts, but maybe I can get close enough." He took several tentative steps forward, but each one was visibly harder than the last, and he ended up retreating to Martha's side. He sniffed, rubbed the back of his neck. "All right, hold on, let me think about this."

"I'll do it," Martha said.

He blinked down at her. "Do what?"

"I'll get the branch."

"No. No way. It's too dangerous."

"Same goes for you. And it will bear my weight better than yours." When he hesitated, she gave him her most confident smile. "It's our best shot. I can do this."

His protective nature warred with his practical side, but in the end he knew she was right. He handed her the coil of extra string, holding onto one end himself. "Tie this around the branch, and I'll help you pull it out."

Martha took a deep breath and began slowly moving forward, sinking deeper with each step, until she could barely lift her foot. Then she lowered herself carefully to the ground, turning to face the Doctor, legs and lower back fully extended in the mud. With her body weight thus distributed, she could scoot backwards towards the goal. It was hard work, and it seemed to take ages until her shoulders finally bumped up against the back of the Broodkeeper. The Doctor's eyes never left her, his brow furrowed in worry and concentration, as if he could will her to safety. It was times like this that she realized that she did have a place in his hearts, even if it wasn't quite the one she wanted.

She rested her head for a moment on the smooth metal, breathing hard from the exertion. But the suction of the quicksand against her backside reminded her that time was still of the essence. She tied the string around the branch and worked it free from the mire while the Doctor pulled from his end.

At last the obstacle was removed. The Doctor reached out his hand. "Good job, Martha. Now come on back."

"Not just yet. You've still got the problem of shooting him before he shoots you, but I have an idea."

"Martha!"

Ignoring him, she twisted around, leaned across the Broodkeeper's back, scooped up a handful of thick silt and let it dribble from her fingers over the eyepieces. The creature howled its displeasure, but the laser beams disappeared. "…Nine pink elephants, ten pink elephants," Martha said under her breath just as the first thin beam of light sliced through the mud. Another few seconds, and the robot's weaponry was back to full power.

"Ten seconds!" Martha was triumphant. "I can give you ten seconds. Is that enough?"

"It'll rather have to be." He grinned at her, restrung the bow, nocked the arrow. "Ready…Go!"

As Martha dropped her handful of mud, the Doctor stepped in front of the Broodkeeper, taking a deep breath, drawing the bow, sighting along the arrow. He held the pose while Martha anxiously counted the seconds to herself. "Come on, Doctor, you don't have long."

Bowstring pressed to his cheek, he said, "A fraction of an inch off the mark, and the chip shatters on his casing. Further off, and it misses him entirely and hits you. I've got one chance to get this exactly right."

Martha gulped and dropped another glob of mud to buy some more time. The Doctor held his breath and finally let the arrow fly. From behind the robot, Martha couldn't see where it struck, but the Doctor's explosive chuff and accompanying fist pump told her all she needed to know.

For a few seconds, nothing changed. Martha could still hear the sizzling sound of the Broodkeeper burning its way through the mud blindfold. But at the Doctor's order of "Cease fire!" all went silent, and Martha let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding.

* * *

**Author's Note:** For any eagle-eyed readers who are wondering why the Twelfth Doctor wouldn't even admit Robin Hood existed if Ten had already taken archery lessons from him, all I can say is that I think Twelve was still suffering from a bit of post-regeneration amnesia. That, and I wrote this chapter long before "Robots of Sherwood" aired. :-)


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer: **Sadly, I don't own Doctor Who and make no profit from it.

* * *

Many exhausting and laborious hours later, the Broodkeeper was finally free from the quicksand. As the first tinges of pink touched the clouds, Martha, on solid ground at last, flopped on her back and was immediately asleep. She awoke just a couple of minutes later to find the Doctor staring down at her.

"You're all right," he said. She wasn't sure if it was question or command.

"Yeah, fine." She took his proffered hand and pulled herself upright.

"Good, come along. The Broodkeeper is going to show us where it first landed."

"And what about him?" She nodded to Charlemagne, slumped against a massive beech tree, cradled between exposed roots, snoring mightily.

"We said we'd find him, and we found him. He'll be fine to make his own way back to his people."

The site of the night's adventure was nearly behind them when they heard a shout. "Wait! Where do you think you're going?"

The Doctor closed his eyes, clenched his fists, before turning around with a false smile and exaggerated patience. "It's over, Your Majesty. You are safe now. You can go on back to your army and your little war games."

"And what are you doing with that creature?"

"Don't worry about it. We're taking care of it; he's not your responsibility." He turned his back on the king, looked to his companion. "Honestly, Martha, I have no idea what possessed me to come here in the first place. Time travel can be such a disillusioning business and–"

But Charlemagne was talking over him in the voice of a man used to authority. "This land is my responsibility – its people, their welfare. That makes any threat to them my responsibility as well. So until this thing is safely beyond our borders, I am not letting it out of my sight."

The Doctor grinned. "Now there is the Charlemagne I was hoping to meet! Well, come on if you're coming, then."

As the Doctor enthusiastically cleared their path with his machete, Martha asked, "So remind me – who exactly are this lot that we're looking for? Something like 'centipedes,' yeah?"

The Broodkeeper said, "That information has already been explained."

Martha wondered how it was possible for a robotic monotone to sound so disapproving. "Well, at the time, you'll remember, I was dredging you out of the quicksand while trying not to get sucked under myself. So excuse me if I was a little distracted."

"Now, children," said the Doctor. "The Brood is Sintepian, Martha. From Sintepius Major."

"Ah, I remember. And Sintepius Minor is where they hatch the eggs."

"Their breeding planet, yes."

"So if this fellow's job is on Sintepius Minor, how did he end up on Earth?"

"Well, see, what you have to understand is that they actually lay the eggs on Major, and then ship them off to Minor. If you're among the ultra rich, you can afford a spaceship and robot nanny just for your own precious little egg. But the average Sintepian joins a cooperative. For a fee, they'll keep your egg in stasis. Then, once the cooperative has accumulated a large enough clutch of eggs, they load the lot into a ship with two or three nannies, and off they go to Sintepius Minor. They'll hatch there, the Broodkeepers will see them through the first two or three stages of metamorphosis, then they are shipped back home, where their parents will raise them the rest of the way. Pretty efficient process, really."

"But they hit a spot of trouble along the way?"

"That is correct," the Broodkeeper said. "On the journey to Sintepius Minor, we encountered an anomaly that altered our trajectory, and the Brood was lost."

The Doctor whacked at a particularly stubborn holly branch in their path. "The way he described it last night, sounds like a wormhole. Or maybe a timestorm. Hard to say."

Charlemagne snorted, and the Doctor looked back at him. "Got something you'd like to add, Charlie?"

"I am to understand that this creature is the caretaker for the children of its master? And that they lost their way on a journey?"

"That's right. Their ship was blown off course in a storm."

"Then why are they not all lost together? How does a guardian allow himself to be separated from his charges?"

"Excellent question, Your Majesty!" The Doctor slapped him on the back, earning a glare from the king. "What do you say to that, Tin Man? How did you end up in a different spot from the rest of them?"

"Our heat shields were malfunctioning. I was outside the ship, attempting a repair. The forces exerted by the anomaly severed the safety tether."

The Doctor's eyes creased in an empathetic frown. "So you went flying one way, and the ship went flying another, I see. You hear that, Your Majesty? Not his fault. They got sent in random directions, just like popcorn kernels shooting out of a popper. Well, not really like that at all, but that doesn't matter because you don't know what I'm talking about anyway, do you?"

Charlemagne grabbed Martha's arm, pulled her sideways, leaned in to whisper, "Your master's words are those of a madman."

"He's not my master. But I know."

"And yet you follow him?"

Martha shrugged. "Sometimes I think he truly is crazy. But most times I think he might just be the only sane one in the whole world."

Any further debate on the Doctor's mental status was cut off when the Broodkeeper announced, "We have arrived at the entry point."

The travellers looked around them. They stood in a small sun-dappled clearing, bucolic but nondescript, just one of dozens that they had passed through already. The Doctor turned in a slow circle. "This is it? You're sure? This is where you landed?"

"What were you expecting?" asked Charlemagne.

"I don't know." He looked lost. "A schism? A spinning space-time whirlpool? Something visible, something I could examine." He pulled out the screwdriver, aimed it all around, shook his head, pocketed it again.

"Maybe whatever it was closed itself up already," Martha said.

"We'd best hope not, because then we're in real trouble."

"Because we won't be able to find the Brood?"

"Exactly." He measured out his frustration in long strides across the patchy grass. "I could probably whip up some sort of sensor in the TARDIS, but I'm afraid we don't have that much time. If the eggs hatch in inhospitable territory…" He froze mid-step, suddenly aware of a strange tingling, of the way the hairs on his arm were standing on end. "Martha, come here. Do you feel that?"

She moved over to him. "Feel what?"

"You don't? Never mind then." He closed his eyes, breathed out slowly, stretched his arm out and waved it back and forth until he found the direction where the sensation seemed strongest. He took slow steps forward until the tingling intensified to a tugging, something trying to pull him in. He changed direction, headed off on a tangent, his hand still reaching towards the force, dragging a toe in the dirt to circumscribe the perimeter of the disturbance. He could hear Charlemagne's "What is he–?" and Martha's "Hush!" but he ignored them both, pouring all his focus into sensing the rift in the fabric of space and time. When he had returned to the starting point, he opened his eyes, leaned back against a tree, ran his hand through his hair, stared into the centre of the ring he had drawn, pondered what to do next. Martha and Charlemagne came to stand next to him.

"Are you wizards, sir?" Charlemagne's voice was pitched low and full of awe.

That roused the Doctor from his reverie. "What? Certainly not. I am a man of science. So is she. Well, I mean, she's not a _man_ of science, obviously, but–"

"So then this is not a magic circle?"

"Nope, no, nothing mystical about it at all. It's just to– No! Wait!"

But it was too late. At the Doctor's reassurance, Charlemagne had stepped boldly across the line – and disappeared. Martha instinctively dove for him; the Doctor grabbed at her as she went by, managed to grip her left wrist. But the pull that until now only the Doctor had felt gripped her as well. She cried out as her legs were swept out from under her, her body pulled horizontal in mid-air, her fingers curling tight around his wrist, her right hand flailing wildly, seeking something else to hang on to. He saw with horror that her lower body had vanished into a shimmering nothingness. Her eyes were panicked, locked on his, and he doubted that she was finding much consolation in his expression.

The suction of the vortex was tremendous. The Doctor clung to a tree branch with one hand, to Martha with the other, trying to pull her toward him but making no progress. "Help me," he said through gritted teeth to the Broodkeeper.

"All efforts are useless. The gravitational force is too strong."

The Doctor considered this while his muscles protested the strain they were under. At last he looked Martha in the eyes. "He's right, Martha. It's no use. Even if I could hold on, which I can't, the force would pull you apart." A whimper escaped her, his dear, brave Martha, so terrified and trying so valiantly to hide it.

He let go of the branch, staggered forward a few steps until he could dig his heels in against the pull. He dug into his pocket, came out with a small black disk, pressed it into her free hand. "Take this. It's a tracker. Don't lose it." Her fist clenched convulsively around it.

And then he let go of her wrist. Her grip on him redoubled in strength. "I'm sorry, Martha, I truly am sorry. But I will come for you. I will find you. Let go now. Just let go," he said gently. And when she didn't obey, he began prying at her fingers one by one.

"No! No, wait! Please, no!"

He stilled in his movements. "Martha. Trust me." He gave her the best expression of calm and assurance that he could muster. There was a long pause as she studied his eyes. Then she released his arm and was gone.


	5. Chapter 5

**Disclaimer:** Sadly, I don't own Doctor Who and make no profit from it. Some dialogue is respectfully taken from the episode "Blink" by Steven Moffat.

* * *

The Doctor stepped out of the TARDIS, surveyed his surroundings. They had landed on a deserted country road, beside a tall iron gate that guarded the drive leading to a grand old house. He pressed his face through the bars. The house was still lovely, although it had clearly seen better days. At the rear was an overgrown garden, crowded with wildflowers and tall grasses, overseen by a marble sculpture of an angel. The whole scene was picturesque in its wildness; the Doctor wondered what was making the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

But he was distracted from this prickling sensation by the beeping of the locator in his left hand. He turned in the direction indicated, expecting to see his companion, but instead found only the tracking disk he had given her, trodden into the dirt on the side of the road. "Oh, Martha, where are you?" he breathed.

But there was no time to mourn or fret; he was distracted from his distraction by the chirping of the device in his right hand. He waved it all around him with little effect, but when he aimed it overhead, a pink pulsating cloud appeared ten feet in the air. "There it is. That's the rift that your Brood and my friend got sucked through."

"Why are we now able to see it?" asked the Broodkeeper.

"On Sintepius, are you familiar with how certain substances will fluoresce under ultraviolet light? Yes? Well, this is the same basic idea: throw the right wavelength at the rift, and it becomes visible. But that pulsing – that's not so good. It means the rift is destabilizing. It might seal itself off. But on the other hand, it could expand and start vacuuming up more and more of its surroundings. I need to deal with it and fast."

A sudden wave of dizziness hit him, and he had to brace himself against his metal companion to keep from staggering.

"Do you require medical assistance? I am programmed with such knowledge."

"Sure, of Sintepians. Who knows what your knowledge would do to a Gallifreyan. But no, I'm not sick; I'm just feeling the effects of time flux. Charlemagne has been removed from his proper place in Earth's timeline. If we don't get him back, very bad things are going to happen to the space-time continuum." He paused to think, to prioritize. "Okay, I say we deal with the rift first, then the time flux."

"There is a matter more urgent than either of those: White Hatching is about to begin."

"What? Okay, let's pretend for the sake of argument that I may have forgotten a few details about the Sintepian growth cycle. Explain 'White Hatching' to me. In fact, explain it all."

"The eggs are incubated in a cool, dark place, preferably underground. In the White Hatching, the young hatch from the shells, but they are still covered by a protective membrane. They then migrate to the surface; exposure to daylight triggers the Red Hatching, when they break free from the membrane and begin to feed. It is essential that we reach them before Red Hatching."

"Why? Can they not tolerate Earth's environment? Will they not survive?"

"The environment is not the issue."

"Then what is?"

"On Sintepius Minor, the Migration is carefully controlled. They are conducted to nursery pens which will keep them contained after the Red Hatching. Without these pens, they will spread out in search of food. It will be impossible for the Assistant Broodkeeper to gather them together. They will scatter and be lost."

"Just how big a clutch are we talking about?"

"Approximately six thousand."

He blew out a low whistle. "Blimey, that's quite a nursery. And what kind of food will they be in search of?"

"Iron. A juvenile Sintepian consumes about five tons of iron per day."

The Doctor blanched to think of six thousand Sintepian hatchlings gnawing their way through London's infrastructure. "Okay then, new priorities: first, finding the Brood. Then the rift. Then Charlemagne's flux. Now where are we?"

Shoving the locator and the rift detector into his coat pockets, he turned in a circle, trying to orient himself. A familiar skyline rose from the horizon. "Well, we're still on Earth. Early twenty-first century, I'd say. London. It always seems to be London, doesn't it? You know, I used to travel to France, Italy, even China once. Met Marco Polo. These days it feels like all of Earth is London."

The Broodkeeper said in monotone complaint, "We have no time for reminiscence."

"I'm a multitasker. I can reminisce and plan at the same time. So – the Brood is in London or thereabouts. And you say the Assistant would look for someplace cool, dark and underground. That would mean…the Underground! Come on, Broodkeeper, I'm taking you to the big city."

An electronic hum made him turn around; he jumped to see a Silurian standing next to him. "Wait, what?"

But the voice that answered was that of the Broodkeeper. "Since our destination is a populated area, it seems advisable to generate a hologram so as to avoid detection."

"You're hoping to avoid detection looking like that? What made you pick that form?"

"For the same reason that I chose a leopard earlier: my databanks indicate that this is the appearance of a predominant life-form in the area."

The Doctor burst out laughing. "Well, your senses of time and of geography got a bit fried on your trip through the wormhole, because you've been wrong on both counts."

"Then what form do the local inhabitants take?"

"They're human." When the Broodkeeper looked as blank as it was possible for a Silurian hologram to look, he continued, "Human, you know, like Martha. She's from this general time and location. Try looking something like her. In fact, try sounding like her, too, instead of all…" He waved his hand with an expression of vague distaste. "Metallic."

Another hum, and Martha was beside him, every detail perfect, from maroon skirt to lacy black top to long sleek hair to pink headband. The Estuary accent was perfect as well. "Is this more acceptable, Doctor?"

The Doctor blinked. "Okay, you took that more literally than I intended, but good enough. No time to waste. Allons-y!"

The Doctor set off at a fast clip down the road, the Martha lookalike trotting behind him. "Now the Underground is vast, huge. It would take days to search all of it. So we need a plan to narrow—"

"I have their precise coordinates."

That brought him up short. "What? How?"

"The Assistant Broodkeeper is transmitting regular status updates."

"Is he now? Well, that's very helpful. Any other useful tidbits you'd like to share?"

"Perhaps the Assistant's databanks are corrupted as well, because it has chosen the same hologram that I did earlier."

"You mean he's a Silurian? Oh, brilliant." The Doctor sucked his teeth in exasperation.

"Also, your companions are with him. He impressed them into service to transport the Brood to their current location."

"Oh, well, that's one bit of good news!"

"Also, he is likely to view your involvement as hostile interference, much as I did before your neural reprogramming."

"Well, let him know I'm a friend. Tell him I'm here to help."

"Impossible. My communication system has been damaged. I am able to receive transmissions but not to send them."

The Doctor stopped, looked irresolutely ahead towards London, back towards the TARDIS. "Well, do I have time to whip up another chip?" he asked, his tone high and fretful.

"No. White Hatching is beginning. Red Hatching is imminent. And then—"

"Yes, yes, I know, then London Bridge is falling down because aliens are eating it. All right, no problem. I am a Time Lord. I am a genius. I've learned a few tricks in 903 years. And I've got a gob that won't quit. I'm sure I've got everything I need to outsmart a crazy robot." He knew he was trying to convince himself more than his companion.

He set off towards the city once more, with a brisk, confident stride. But just a hundred yards down the road, he halted again at the sight of an egg-shaped object the size of a lorry, a dull grey darkened here and there by scorch marks, canted in the shallow ditch at the roadside. "This is your ship?"

"Yes. The Assistant reports that the heat shields have been damaged. Also, it is leaking radiation."

"Seriously? My to-do list just keeps growing." He heaved a sigh that seemed to come from his toes, rubbed his face with both hands. "Okay, no, it's fine, it's all under control. First the hatching, then the ship, then the rift, then the flux." He started to turn away, then stopped and stared back at the ship.

"Doctor? We must go. White Hatching—"

"Yes, I know, but the Brood is just going to have to hold their horses. I'll be back in a mo." He sonicked open the hatch of the Sintepian ship and disappeared inside for several minutes. He looked considerably happier when he emerged.

* * *

They were in luck – just as they hit the main thoroughfare, an empty taxi pulled over in response to the Doctor's wave. The driver eyed the bow and arrows that the Doctor still wore slung over his shoulder, and nearly sped off again, but the Time Lord managed to stop him. "Oh no, these aren't weapons, they're just props. We're, um, we're auditioning for a new BBC production about, uh, the Battle of Hastings."

The cabbie wrinkled his nose and muttered something under his breath, but let them in. The Doctor slid to the far side of the seat, unshouldering his gear and tossing the quiver into the Broodkeeper's lap. "Here, fair's fair, you should carry something. Now let me have those coordinates."

With the Brood's position programmed into the Doctor's locator, he was able to give the driver turn-by-turn directions to their destination. The Broodkeeper kept up a steady stream of dour announcements in the background — "White Hatching has begun…White Hatching thirty-one percent complete…White Hatching fifty-two percent complete…Estimated time until Migration sixteen minutes" — that had the cabbie throwing them increasingly uneasy glances in the rear-view mirror until the Doctor managed to shush the robot.

* * *

"Stop! Stop right here!" the Doctor cried as two dots converged on his locator screen. The Broodkeeper was lunging for the door almost before the taxi had halted; the Doctor settled the fare with a flick of the sonic screwdriver at the credit card swipe machine, calling after his companion, "We're directly on top of them. We just have to figure a way to get down there."

He unfolded himself from the taxi and looked up and down the quiet street with its small and faded shopfronts. He pointed to the right. "Maybe if…"

But the Broodkeeper was pointing left. "I think it is better this way."

The Doctor shrugged and turned to follow. He was halfway across the street when he heard someone calling his name and swung back around.

A young blond woman was chasing after him. "Doctor! Doctor!"

He churned quickly through his memories, but couldn't place her. And, as the Broodkeeper had impressed upon him through the entire ride, time was of the essence. So he tried to let her down gently. "Hello. Sorry, bit of a rush. There's a sort of…thing happening. Fairly important that we stop it."

But she wasn't so easily dissuaded. "My God, it's you. It really is you. Oh, you don't remember me, do you?"

Martha's lookalike turned back in annoyance. "Doctor, we haven't got time for this. Migration's started."

The Doctor ignored the robot. Despite the urgency of the situation, there was something about the stranger's manner that made him hesitate to brush her off, some niggling in his sense of the fabric of space and time that told him she was somehow important to him. "Look, sorry, I've got a bit of a complex life. Things don't always happen to me in quite the right order. Gets a bit confusing at times. Especially at weddings." He got rather lost in his own memories for a moment. "I'm rubbish at weddings. Especially my own."

Some sort of comprehension dawned in the woman's eyes. "Oh my God, of course! You're a time traveller — it hasn't happened to you yet, none of it. It's still in your future."

"What hasn't happened?"

"Doctor, please! Twenty minutes to Red Hatching!"

"It was me," the woman said, her fingers worrying at the edges of the blue plastic folder she was holding. "Oh for God's sake, it was me all along! You got it all from me."

"Got what?"

"Okay, listen. One day you're going to get stuck in 1969. Make sure you've got this with you. You're going to need it." She pressed the folder into his hands.

"Doctor!" The Broodkeeper was losing all semblance of patience, and the Doctor knew he couldn't afford to delay much longer.

"Yeah, listen, listen, gotta dash. Things happening." He thought of his to-do list. "Well, four things." And of the faux Silurian he had to get past before he could accomplish any of them. "Well, four things and a lizard."

He half expected her to cling to their acquaintance, to attempt to keep him talking, but she flashed him a smile that said she somehow understood his rambling. "Okay, no worries. On you go. See you around someday."

And it was that understanding that made him turn back around after only a couple of steps. "What was your name?"

"Sally Sparrow."

"Good to meet you, Sally Sparrow."

A man carrying a carton of milk walked up next to Sally, and from his slack-jawed stare, it was obvious that Sally wasn't the only one to recognize the Doctor. Then Sally took the man's hand, and he seemed as stunned by that as he was by the presence of the Time Lord. Sally shot a dazzling smile in the Doctor's direction. "Goodbye, Doctor."

She turned and led her friend back to the bookstore that she had come out of. The Doctor watched them go. And despite the fact that these two were utter strangers to him, there was something comforting about seeing them walk away hand in hand, as if they were old friends whose pairing he had long been rooting for.

And then he suddenly remembered where he was, when he was, and turned and dashed after the Broodkeeper.


	6. Chapter 6

**Disclaimer:** Sadly, I don't own Doctor Who and make no profit from it.

* * *

The Doctor leafed through Sally's packet while he jogged after the Broodkeeper. Descriptions of an abandoned house filled with that quantum-locked race of predators known as Weeping Angels; a list of DVDs; the transcript of a rather confusing conversation that he would apparently be having someday… He didn't realize that the Broodkeeper had stopped moving until he bumped into it. He rolled the folder into a loose tube, tucked it into his inner breast pocket, and pushed it to the back of his mind.

The robot was leaning over a grating in the sidewalk, staring down into a maintenance shaft. "It seems likely that this would lead us to them. But it is locked."

"Well, lucky for us then that I have this handy-dandy tool capable of opening all kinds of locks. Or we could just use the front door." He pointed a few feet further on, where a red, blue and white sign proclaimed the entrance to the Underground.

They took the stairs two at a time, dodging harried commuters and dawdling tourists. There seemed to be some sort of commotion among the passengers waiting at one end of the platform, and as he got closer, the Doctor could see why. It wasn't every day that one saw a grim-faced medieval king walking slowly out of a Tube tunnel.

Just behind Charlemagne, a sight for sore eyes was emerging into the fluorescent glare. "Martha!"

Her eyes flicked through the crowd, found his. "Doctor!" Her voice was strained, her smile tight. Then she saw who was standing behind him, and for a moment surprise trumped tension. "Is that me?"

The Doctor grinned. "No, no, not real you, just hologram you. Brilliant likeness, though, isn't it?"

"Yes, great." She didn't sound quite as enthusiastic as he did.

"Anyway, told you I'd find you. Are you all right?"

"Fine. Till the next train comes along."

"Well, then, hurry up." He knelt at the end the platform, stretched out a hand, waiting for her to reach him. "Come on, I'll help you up."

"Can't do that. The Assistant wouldn't like it. Got to move at the pace of the children."

It was then that the Doctor looked past her, his eyes straining into the shadows, to see a Silurian walking alongside a huge wine-red pillow that moved in a strange motion, undulating yet erratic. "There is the Brood. They are enclosed in an egg sac to keep them together during the Migration," said the Broodkeeper at his elbow, as if he couldn't figure that out.

As the Assistant moved into the light of the station, it spoke in the same cold, mechanical monotone that the Broodkeeper had so recently abandoned. "Interference with the Migration cannot be permitted. Clear the area." The Silurian eyes glowed an eerie green.

The Doctor spun to face the gathered crowd, waving his arms to shoo them away. "You heard the lizard. Everyone back! Go on!"

A man in a grey pinstriped suit and wire-rim spectacles frowned at him. "Is this a joke? It's too late for April Fools', too early for Halloween."

"Nope, no joke. That thing means business; you'd best shift, all of you."

Pinstripe stood his ground. "Some sort of performance art thing then? Are we on camera?" He peered around suspiciously.

"Broodkeeper? A little help here?"

With a shimmer of light, the Martha hologram vanished and the droid's true metal form appeared. Twin laser beams sliced through the station name on the wall of the tunnel; the bottom half of the sign sheared away, making an impressive racket as it shattered onto the rails.

The Doctor shook his head. "Melodramatic, but effective," he said, as shrill screams echoed around the cavern of the station and there was a general stampede for the exits.

The Doctor turned back to the Assistant, stared steadily into the green eyes that could so easily turn deadly. "Fine, they're gone now, see? I'm not leaving. I'm here to help the Brood."

The Assistant was still considering this when Gallifreyan ears picked up a faint rumbling. At the same instant, Martha said with a quaver in her voice, "Doctor, I feel vibrations."

The Doctor aimed his screwdriver down the tunnel, switching the traffic signal to red. There was an answering squeal of brakes. But as his brain raced through the physics involved, he knew the driver could not stop in time. He jumped down onto the tracks, grabbed a corner of the egg sac, began tugging at it. "Everyone together now! We have to get the Brood onto the platform!"

Martha and Charlemagne pitched in, while the Broodkeeper leaned over the platform edge, ready to take up the weight they were lifting. But the Assistant howled, "Unauthorized interference!" and fired warning shots over their heads.

The Time Lord froze, arms full of slick red casing filled with squirming baby Sintepians, and glared at the droid, squinting against the headlight of the train growing ever closer. "You do not have time to be messing with me if you want to keep these children alive."

The Assistant finally seemed to notice the danger looming behind it and began helping rather than hindering. One final heave, and the children were safe on the platform, humans and Gallifreyan and faux Silurian clambering up behind. Charlemagne was tall enough to pull himself up without help, but the Doctor shoved Martha from behind to give her the boost she needed. She repaid him by grabbing his outstretched hand and hauling backwards with all her might, while the train's horn blared a frantic warning. He scrabbled up the side of the platform and landed on hands and knees. A rush of air fanned his coat as the train slid past just inches from his heels before grinding to a halt.

The Doctor would have been more than happy to remain there on all fours for a few minutes longer, catching his breath after the near miss. But the hatchlings, oblivious as newborns of every species are to anything beyond their own needs, were already on the move again in their quest for daylight.

"You will assist the Brood up the stairs," the Assistant told its new helpers.

"No!" the Broodkeeper said. "Migration must be delayed. Red Hatching cannot take place here."

The Assistant's eyes glowed again with a warning light. "Migration will proceed. A delay in Red Hatching could prove hazardous to the health of the children."

"To proceed with Red Hatching could prove hazardous to the health of the children," the other droid countered. "I am the Broodkeeper. I have final decision on matters affecting Brood welfare."

"Please transmit authorization signal identifying you as my superior."

The Broodkeeper hesitated. "I…cannot."

"Then I do not recognize your authority. Migration will proceed."

While this exchange was going on, the Doctor hauled himself to his feet and whispered to Martha, "The Broodkeeper has my arrows. Give me one of yours."

He pulled a blue glass vial and some string from a pocket, tied the vial to the shaft of Martha's arrow just behind the head, took aim at the writhing mass of red currently lurching against the bottom stair. The arrow pierced the egg sac at an oblique angle. There was a shattering of glass as it ended its flight against the stair riser, and a thin plume of blue vapor escaped from the point of entry. The Brood went still and silent; the two nannies, their quarrel forgotten, turned in unison to face the threat.

The Doctor blew on the tip of the bow as if it were a gun, and slung it over his shoulder. "Problem solved. You're welcome."

"You just fired a weapon into a crowd of children," Martha said, aghast.

"Yes, and missed them all, I'd like to point out. They're sleeping comfortably now. The same drug that keeps the eggs safely in stasis on the trip to Sintepius Minor can keep the babies safely in stasis until we get them back there. Well, if we act fast. The gas will dissipate soon enough, and then they'll wake up. But we've bought ourselves some time. All right, everyone join in, let's get this lot up the stairs, lift on three, one, two , three, that's right, careful now, steady…"

If he had stopped talking, he might have been cut down by a laser beam. But the incessant stream of orders, direction, encouragement seemed to convince the number-two caretaker that here was an authority figure, and it obediently followed along.

The five of them managed to wrestle the unwieldy load up the stairs and onto the street. Seeing a taxi heading towards them, the Doctor let go of his corner, Charlemagne taking up the slack with a grunt. The Doctor waved his arms at the cab, even stepped into the road when the car didn't slow, but the driver swerved around him and kept going.

"Well, of all the…"

Martha shook her head. "Look at us, Doctor. There's not a cabbie in London that's going to pull over for this lot."

"Well, how did you get here in the first place?"

"The Assistant had some sort of wheeled sledge. Made us pull it all the way here. But it's back in the Tube tunnel, probably smashed by that train."

"Humph." He stared all around for a long minute, then grinned and dashed across the street, his motley crew struggling behind.

He burst through the door of the bookshop, startling the couple who sat behind the counter talking, leaning in, heads close. "Sally Sparrow! Hello again. Got a car we could borrow?"

She jumped to her feet, looked ready to lend him the moon if only she could, looked crushed to be unable to help. "No. No, I'm sorry, I don't. We don't."

"Ah, too bad. Anything with wheels, anything at all?"

"Uh…" Sally stared around, wild-eyed, and seemed to stall for a minute on the crowd in the doorway: the woman with the bow and arrows, the Dark Ages warrior, the brushed-metal robot, the giant lizard, all holding a large, red, leathery pillow with fletching poking from a hole.

"What about one of the book carts?" Her friend pointed across the store, and Sally snapped back into action, sweeping an armload of books off of a cart onto a table and then shoving the cart towards the strange group, who deposited their burden onto it with relief.

The Doctor flashed her a brilliant smile. "That's perfect, ta. I promise I'll get it back to you. Well, I'll try to get it back to you. Well, honestly, I probably won't get it back to you."

Sally laughed. "I don't care. Just go, do whatever it is you do. And be safe."

As the Doctor jogged down the road, pushing the cart, he threw one last glance over his shoulder at Sally and her friend, framed in the door of the shop. And then they were out of sight, and his thoughts went back to everything he still had left to do.


	7. Chapter 7

**Disclaimer:** Sadly, I don't own Doctor Who and make no profit from it.

* * *

It took two long hours to push the cart back to the little lane where the Sintepian spaceship lay. The longer Charlemagne was displaced in the timestream, the worse the effects of the time flux were getting; a touch of nausea had been added to the Doctor's vertigo. He suspected that he was looking somewhat peaked, based on the concerned looks that Martha kept giving him from the corner of her eye, but so far she hadn't said anything.

He stopped at what he deemed a safe distance from the damaged ship and took a reading with the screwdriver.

"How bad is the radiation leak?" Martha asked.

"Not so terrible yet. But bad enough that I don't want you going any closer."

"Remember our first adventure, up there on the moon? And you, absorbing all that radiation from the X-ray machine?" She wore a nostalgic smile.

He knew she didn't mean anything by it, was just reminiscing, but the dizziness and stress made him impatient and snappish. "Yes, well, that was different. It was a contained area. How am I supposed to absorb all this?" He waved his arms to encompass the surrounding countryside.

She blinked, looked a bit hurt, but said only, "Okay, what do you want me to do? How can I help?"

He pulled out another blue vial like the one that had put the Brood to sleep, and pressed it into her hands. "I want you to babysit."

"Seriously?" She sounded more affronted by this assignment than by his earlier shirty tone. "Is that all you think I can manage, to stand around watching a great big sack that's not even doing anything?"

"It's not a make-work job, Martha. They'll be waking soon." He eyed the red casing. Was the vertigo playing tricks with his eyes, or was there a hint of movement in one corner? "Out in broad daylight like this, they'll start hatching. And that can't be allowed to happen, not here, not now."

"You stopped it earlier." She tried to hand the stasis drug back to him, but he shook his head.

"Yes, and what I did back there, what I said about it being safe…well, what I should have said was 'relatively safe'. Safe compared to the alternative."

"You said it's what they use themselves."

"Yes, but on the ship, there would be all kinds of instruments to monitor the children's vital signs, machines to dispense a carefully controlled constant dosage. They wouldn't just chuck a bottleful at the babies. Unfortunately, I don't dare bring the Brood on board the ship till the leak is fixed, and I need the robots to help me with that. They can go where you can't. So that leaves you to keep the children safe in the meantime. You're a doctor, Doctor Jones. These are your patients."

She looked down, mumbled, "I'm not a doctor yet."

He waved away that objection. "Close enough. In fact, I could name 31 planets where the training you've already completed would qualify you."

She took a deep breath. "Controlled dosage, you said."

He watched her pull off her cloth headband, watched her soak it with the blue liquid, watched her apply it to the hole in the casing just until the squirming in the corner of the sac subsided. Confident that the children were in good hands, he turned his attention back to fixing their transportation.

"You! Assistant! Can you handle repairing the heat shield?"

"Yes."

"Well, hop to it, then. Broodkeeper, you're with me." He turned for the TARDIS, but Charlemagne called after him.

"And I, sir? What am I to do?"

"You, uh…" He glanced around, looking for inspiration. "The woman and the children need someone to protect them. That's you. Defender of the defenceless." He caught Martha's eye and winked. _Now that's a make-work assignment._

* * *

In the TARDIS workshop, he loaded his pockets with every tool he thought he could possibly need. Then it was back to the Sintepian ship, the Broodkeeper trotting dutifully behind.

In the engine room, he spotted the source of the leak right away: a hairline fracture running vertically the entire length of the four-foot high cylinder that housed the diladnium fuel rods. He ran his fingers along the fissure, across the glossy whiteness of the housing. "What is this made of, a carbon-catalin composite? I've got something in here somewhere that should be able to solder that back together." He dug through his pockets, pulled out various contenders for the role of carbon-catalin composite sealer, tossed the rejects over his shoulder. He settled at last on a tool that looked like the offspring of a mating between a sonic screwdriver and a peashooter. He tried to apply the tip to the crack, but the world kept swimming before his eyes, and the crack seemed to shift every time he reached for it. After several attempts, he passed the soldering gun to the Broodkeeper. "Here, you can have the honours."

The droid made short work of sealing up the damaged core. With the leak stopped, and in the confines of the engine room, the Doctor was able to replicate the radiation-absorbing trick that Martha had remembered so fondly. He took a reading with the screwdriver, nodded in satisfaction. "Much better. The outside levels should drop now too. Crisis averted. Now let's see what we can do to fix your communication system."

"I must return to the children." The robot started for the door, but the Doctor blocked its path.

"Nonsense. Martha is taking care of them. And we need to get you fixed up if you want the Assistant to give you your old job back. So come on, open up."

The Broodkeeper unlatched a control panel in its side with obvious reluctance, and the Doctor buried his head inside.

"By the way, do you know where we are now relative to your own timestream?" he asked as he worked.

"No. What is the current Sintepian date?"

The Doctor made a calculation with the screwdriver and showed the readout to the droid.

"Our departure from Sintepius Major was eight sanas ago."

"Eight Sintepian sanas. That's…let's see…about one Earth year, I'd say. That's not so far off. I mean, what's one year in the vast history of the universe? Because honestly, while it would be no big deal to load the lot of you into the TARDIS, I had no idea how I was going to transport your ship. But this way, you can just take the ship and head back to Sintepius Minor under your own power. You'll be a little late, the parents will be worried, but all in all it's not so bad. Wouldn't be the first time I got someone home a year late. Her mum was none too happy, but she got over it in the end."

The Broodkeeper looked set to make some reply, but the Doctor didn't give it a chance. "Okay, I see the problem, if I just connect these two…" A spark snapped, and the Time Lord sat back on his heels.

"I think you are not competent to make the repairs."

"Competent? Of course I'm competent. I just need you to hold still is all."

"I have not moved."

"Haven't you?" The Doctor blew out a breath, wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand, blinked rapidly, shook his head, gulped down the bile rising in his throat. The trembling in his extremities was making it hard to reconnect the delicate wiring, and he pressed his forearms against the Broodkeeper's metal frame to give his hands more stability. "All right, one more try. I've almost got it. And…there! How's that?"

There was a long pause, then the robot seemed to hold itself a little taller. "The Assistant has accepted my authorization signal."

"Excellent! All right, then, time to send you home. Let's go get the kids loaded in and…"

He was cut off by Martha's scream from outside. "Doctor!"


	8. Chapter 8

**Disclaimer:** Sadly, I don't own Doctor Who and make no profit from it.

* * *

At Martha's cry, the Doctor set off running down the hall, caroming off the walls since he seemed unable to run straight. He stumbled outside to see that Martha had flung herself across the cart, arms splayed protectively over the egg sac. Charlemagne stood by her, sword drawn, glaring in all directions at a threat he could not see.

"Doctor! The Brood! They just started rising into the air; I had to throw myself on top to hold them down."

"They're waking up? I told you to—"

"I did!" she shouted. "They're sound asleep. This wasn't them. Something was pulling them up. I could feel it pulling at me too. Just like back in the Ardennes. Only I guess it's not strong enough to lift us together just yet. Actually, come to think of it, I don't think I feel it anymore." Slowly, cautiously, she stood and released her grip on the red casing.

The Doctor, swaying slightly, put one hand on the cart to maintain his balance, reached the other hand into a pocket and pulled out the rift detector. And then he, like everyone else, gasped at what it revealed. The pink cloud was much larger, much lower than when last he had seen it, the pulsation more erratic and more urgent. Pink funnels spun from the cloud, little tornados of time, reaching and extending and retracting. One stretched down toward the roadside to their left, and a stand of foxglove vanished, leaving only clods of earth to show where it had been uprooted.

That galvanized the Time Lord into action. He gave the cart a mighty shove towards the Sintepian spaceship. "Assistant! Are those heat shields done?"

The robot straightened from its repair task. "Yes."

"Then go! Get out of here! Now!" He clapped his hands on the shoulders of the two humans and propelled them towards the TARDIS. "In-in-in! Hurry!"

Martha managed to fumble her key into the lock and then they were through the door. And none too soon; the Doctor had no sooner slammed the door shut than a violent tremor sent them all flying. It felt as though the TARDIS were cartwheeling in five different directions at once, and they all clung to the railings, to the console, to each other.

At last everything was still and quiet. The Doctor pulled himself up off the floor, breathing hard. There would be bruises, he could tell, but at least here in the TARDIS he was free from vertigo, shielded from the effects of the time flux. He looked around at his companions. "Everyone all right?"

Charlemagne was already on his feet, staring around him. "I am fine. Do you know where we are now?"

Martha was a bit slower to rise, but she too seemed relatively unscathed.

"I must say, Charles, you're taking this all pretty calmly," the Doctor said. "Not even a word about my ship being bigger on the inside."

The king waved a hand dismissively. "Oh, the girl explained it to me: that when I stepped into the magic circle, I was transported into a fairy world."

"Inside of a dewdrop," Martha added. The Doctor arched his eyebrows at her, and she shrugged.

"I must say," Charlemagne continued, "The fairy world is not as I expected. But nothing here surprises me."

The Doctor grinned. "That's the spirit. And to answer your question, Your Majesty…" He flipped on the monitor, studied the view of the outside. "Well, actually, it looks like we haven't moved."

"Really?" Martha said. "Because it sure felt like we moved."

"No, we're still in the same place. The Sintepians are too. See, it's…Oh, wait." He punched a few buttons, studied a few readouts. "Yes, we're in exactly the same spot in space, but not in time. We've gone backwards a year. Oh, a year! Perfect, the Sintepians can make it to their breeding planet right on time!" He ran to the door, flung it open, took half a step outside, and had to grab the doorframe to keep from pitching over.

"Doctor, what's wrong?"

"The time flux. I've got to get Charlemagne back fast. But first I've got to close the rift. And even more first, I've got to get the Sintepians out of here before the rift picks us all up again. Here." He shoved the rift detector into her hands. "Go tell them, would you?"

Martha dashed past him to the spaceship, using the visibility the detector provided to pick and weave her way around the pink tongues lapping out of the cloud, and pounded on the metal hull with her fists, shouting, "You're back in your own time! Go home, quick!" until she heard the sound of the engines spinning to life.

When she arrived back in the TARDIS, the Doctor was just finishing up some settings on the console. "They're on their way? Good. Now for the rift." He took the detector from her, moved to the doorway, illuminated the roiling timestorm.

Martha watched him watching the cloud for several minutes. "So are you cooking up a plan to fix this thing, or what?"

"A plan? Oh, it's all taken care of already. You know, I wasn't just twiddling my thumbs while the TARDIS was tracking you through time and space; I was putting this thing together. This device doesn't just _show_ the rift; press this red button here, and the rift is healed forever."

"That simple? So what are you waiting for? Press it already."

He ignored her, stared up into the sky for another minute. At last he said, "I entered a couple presets on the console. The blue one will take you to the Ardennes, 778. Make sure Charlemagne gets home safe. The yellow one will bring you back to London, just a couple of weeks after I first picked you up. You'll scarcely have been missed; you can just tell everyone you were away on holiday."

"What are you talking about? What do we need presets for? You're the pilot." There was a sharp edge to her voice that bordered on panic. Charlemagne must have noticed it too, because the Doctor could see from the corner of his eye that the king had left off aimlessly wandering the room to come stand over his shoulder.

"Well, see, the thing is that it is that simple, all I have to do is press this button, except…except that I have to be inside the rift when I press it."

Martha blanched. "You're going to blow yourself up?"

"Oh, no-no-no-no," he hastened to assure her. "No explosion. The rift will seal itself off, and I'll be popped out of it. Only…I could end up anywhere. I mean, this thing has four terminus points that we know of, and who knows how many more are out there. Chances of me landing back here at the TARDIS are…well, not so high." The enormity, the finality of what he was about to do hit him. No more TARDIS, no more adventures, no more devil-may-care gallivanting through time and space. Stuck in one place for the rest of his long life…and that was if he were lucky. He felt his throat filling with unshed tears, but he swallowed them down resolutely, continued brightly, "But you've got the presets, so you'll be fine."

"Oh, this is ridiculous," she said impatiently. "I'll do it. Give me another of those tracking disks, I'll jump in and close off the rift, and then you come pick me up, yeah? Just like last time."

"And what if the rift dumps you out into deep space? Or the bottom of the ocean? Or some planet where the atmosphere is pure methane? We got lucky last time, Martha."

"I'm willing to chance it."

For a moment, in his selfishness, looking into her eyes so artless and sincere, her offer tempted him. Then he shook his head. "But I'm not." He could learn to live without the travelling. But he couldn't live with himself if he stood back and let her die in his place.

Not wanting to give her further opportunity to argue who should make the sacrifice, he stepped out of the TARDIS. As soon as he passed the threshold of the protective environment of the timeship, the time flux hit him like a freight train; the ground pitched beneath his feet, his vision clouded, his gorge rose. By sheer stubborn willpower, he managed to take three steps forward before pitching onto his knees.

Martha moved towards him, but someone else was faster; before the Doctor could react or resist, Charlemagne snatched the detector from his hands and dashed across the road, heading for the nearest funnel spinning out of the storm. "Give someone else the chance to play the hero for once, Doctor," he yelled over his shoulder.

"No!" the Doctor cried, and crawled forward a few feet on his hands and knees. But it was too late; the king vanished. And then Martha's arms were around his shoulders, helping him back to his feet, and they stood together, watching the timecloud still illuminated by the device now within it. For a moment, nothing seemed to happen. And then the cloud slowly shrank in on itself until it was gone, and the sky was clear and blue, and the air was warm and tranquil, and the Doctor's horror faded as he came to a realization.

Martha let go of him, hugged herself, shivering slightly. "Now what do we do?" Her voice was barely above a whisper.

"Do? Well, that depends on you. What do you fancy? Past? Future? Another galaxy?"

"No, I mean, what do we do about Charlemagne? How do we get him back?"

"He's already back. He's in his own time. He's home."

"How can you possibly know that? You said yourself that he could end up anywhere."

"I know because I'm standing. Look at me. I'm all better!" He threw his arms wide, twirled around to prove his point.

"Well, of course you're better, the rift is healed, but that doesn't mean—"

"No, no, it wasn't the rift that was making me sick, it was the flux. History was rewriting itself without Charlemagne. Very disorienting. But now I'm better, and history is intact, and that can only mean that he is back in his proper place. Hopefully thinking that everything that happened to him was just a bad dream."

"So it's done? It's all over?" She looked as if she didn't quite dare believe it.

"Let's see." He ticked the points off on his fingers. "Sintepians are in their proper time and on their way home. Charlemagne is in his proper time. Rift has closed up. We're both still in one piece and together and with the TARDIS. I'd say that about takes care of everything."

"Wait, you never did give Charlemagne back his machete, did you?"

"Didn't I?" The Doctor's air was studied innocence. "Oh well, too late now. I'll have to add it to my souvenir collection. But that doesn't matter. What really matters is…We did it!" The Doctor threw one arm around Martha's shoulders, hugged her to his side. He realized his mistake as soon as she relaxed against him and rested her head on his shoulder. He was forever doing this to her, he reflected: always just a little too comfortable, never recognizing how his words and actions affected her until it was too late.

He was contemplating whether it would be crueler to remove his arm or leave it where it was, when suddenly the choice was taken from him. He found himself embracing empty air, his arm falling back to his side. He whirled around. Just inches away was a terrible sight, a sculptured rictus of snarling lips and bared fangs, a deadly hand poised to strike again.

"Weeping Angel," he breathed, careful to keep his eyes fixed on the living stone. He had heard tales of them, but this was the first time he had ever seen one, face to frozen face.

He took several steps back, then stopped. "Wait, think this through, Doctor." Martha was gone, and he had no idea when or where. The only sure way to find her was to follow her. This was what Sally Sparrow had been warning him about. He patted his suit jacket, felt the bulk of Sally's manuscript pressed against one heart. It was their road map to safety, he knew, their guarantee that they would get through this. "I'm coming for you, Martha. We'll be fine – just another adventure." And then he closed his eyes, offered himself up, let a cold touch send him tumbling through space and time.

* * *

THE END


End file.
